Gaming Build

Bacon? said:
A large air cooler like the K2 is similar if not better than a CLC like the H100.
Click to expand...

Not entirely true..

The h100 will be a few degrees cooler and may get you an extra 100mhz (chip depending).

Is are the best great coolers (in their own right)? Yes

Is the H100 worth £40 more? No.
 
morphz said:
Thanks honosuseri & Idleman for the answers.

I'm still a bit undecided about what case I want and have been looking at the CPU watercoolers. How are they for cooling and noise vs the K2? Having looked at the options I am happy to spend ~£100 on the CPU watercooler if it will benefit, is there one you would recommend?

Thanks again
Click to expand...

I think you are stalling waiting on Stulid to appear lol

You need to settle on a case bud and then go from there. The Antec is great although is a midi-tower. The Shinobi XL is a full tower case. If you went with the Antec I would probably just use the K2 heatsink. As the Shinobi XL (which Stulid owns\won to review) is windowed a CLC would look great through the window as you see a lot more of the internals as the "heatsink" is low profile.

A custom waterloop is expensive and time consuming, this is where CLCs come in. Minimum fuss with the look of a watercooled system. The H100i or the Antec 1220 are the ones to seriously consider. The fans can be loud at max so it's common for owners to replace them. If you do a push/pull setup with the fans you will get even better cooling performance.

YOUR BASKET
1 x EVGA GeForce GTX 670 FTW 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE Assassin's Creed III & FTP Currency £305.99
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £179.99
1 x Samsung 256GB SSD 840 PRO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7PD256BW) ** Cash Back Promo ** £179.99
1 x MSI Z77 MPower Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 ATX Motherboard with FREE F1 RC Car & MSI HDD Enclosure £149.99
1 x BitFenix Shinobi XL Full Tower Gaming Windowed Case - Black £114.95
1 x XFX 850W XXX Edition Modular '80 Plus Silver' Power Supply £99.98
1 x Corsair Hydro H100i High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (Socket 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / 2011 / AM2 / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £99.98
1 x Toshiba (7K3000.D) 3TB SATA 6GB/s 64MB Cache - OEM (DT01ACA300) HDD £97.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02050) £79.99
1 x LG CH10LS28 BD-ROM 10x BluRay ROM / DVDRW SATA-II Optical Drive - Black (Retail) £63.98
1 x Avexir MPower Yellow Series 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (AVD3U16000904G-2CM) £40.00
2 x Corsair SP120 Quiet Series High Pressure Low Noise - Dual Pack £25.99 (£51.98)
Total : £1,482.52 (includes shipping : £14.75).



Getting to the topend of your budget. The retail CPU isn't much more and has 2 years more on the warranty. If you don't want the Bluray drive swap it out for a DVD-RW. You don't technically need the Corsair fans but they will be quieter than the stock H100i fans and I added two of the twin packs to do a push/pull setup. I've added the 670FTW GPU as it uses the 680 PCB and cooler, with an overclock it's basically as good as a 680. You will get CUDA support and PhysX which some games use (eg Bioshock Infinite). The 7950 is argualy better bang for buck but I'm just discussing the options here, Nvidia has better 3D support if you think you might upgrade your panel in time.

As I said I think you did a good job spec'ing in the first place, only you know what you want/need. Really look forward to seeing what you settle on. It would be great to see a build log with pretty pics. This will help contribute to your post count, once that hits 100 you get free P&P I'd hope. So it might make sense to leave out the extras like the Corsair SP120 fans and consider adding those down the line when you can get stuff with free P&P.

Hope we are helping more than hindering, all the best to you bud :)
 
Thanks again guys. I had a look through the case sub-forum and saw the CLC's do look good through a windowed case so will have to make a hard decision on spending a bit more on the Shinobi XL or similar windowed case with honosuseri's CLC setup or Antec & K2!

Will change the CPU to retail as 2 years warranty for £6 seems like a deal to me.

I did have a look at nvidia and 3D as I will be getting a 120hz monitor but there didn't seem to be much 3D support for many games atm to make it worthwhile especially at the increased cost. I think I will go for the 7950 for as you say the bang for buck and save some cash now and possibly upgrade later if 3D gets more support? Will I see much increased fps in the OC'd 670 vs 7950?

Sorry for being so indecisive lol, you are definitely helping even though you keep giving me difficult choices! :p It's appreciated lol, I just want to make sure I got it right as it's a fair sum of cash to spend for me :)
 
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